The BSD License

The BSD license is a very business-friendly license for the release of software or intellectual property. Microsoft Windows and Linux both include code released under the BSD license.¹ In fact, some Linux code may have been plagiarized from BSD-licensed code.²

The BSD license is so flexible because it requires very few things. Someone may take BSD-licensed code, modify it, and release a binary or source code, provided that:

1. The new software distribution contains the same copyright notice and disclaimers included in the BSD license
2. The name of the organization responsible for the original BSD-licensed code is not used to promote derivative works

As you can see, you don't need to do much to incorporate BSD-licensed code in your software project. Companies like this freedom because they can incorporate other people's code into their products, acknowledge where it came from, and profit from its use. This differs significantly from the GPL license, which requires that all derivative works also be released under the GPL.

The full text of the BSD license is available at the Open Source Initiave server.

¹The Windows ftp.exe, distributed with all versions of Windows since Windows95, includes the BSD copyright: Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

²Redistributions of Source Code Must Retain the Above Copyright Notice. BSD Today. 11 Dec 2001 <http://www.bsdtoday.com/2001/September/News565.html>.